Officials spar over hiring of ex-city museum director

FITCHBURG -- Questions continued Wednesday about the process used in hiring the city's new economic-development director, as Mayor Lisa Wong fired back at councilors over their concerns.

Those concerns were laid out in an email by Councilor-at-Large Dean Tran to councilors and very briefly discussed at the council meeting Tuesday night. Tran has raised concerns over the manner in which Jerry Beck was selected for the job last month, the council's low level of involvement in the process and how the position was advertised, among others. Council President Stephan Hay has ordered a Council as a Whole Committee meeting to discuss the matter.

Wong did not answer Tran's questions when posed to her by the Sentinel & Enterprise Wednesday, and did not make it clear whether she would do so at the Council as a Whole meeting or at any other time.

"Was the letter sent to me?" she said via text message. "No one has called me or told me I even had to go to the special meeting."

"This is my jurisdiction and if the City Council wants to change things they can change the ordinance. Otherwise, this looks like a witch hunt," Wong said a short time later. "Don't they know we are trying to deal with major issues in the city, and how is this a productive use of a special meeting?"

She said the council has a "history of nonresponsiveness" to her requests for collaboration, as mayor and previously as director of the Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority.

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Wong also questioned why the council -- the makeup of which has mostly changed since then -- required her, as head of FRA, to submit monthly reports to the council, when the same was not asked of her predecessor in the role, Tom Szocik, or her successor, Dan Curley.

Council Vice President Marcus DiNatale called Wong's comments about the council "a complete fabrication of the truth" and said the pieces about her time at the FRA are irrelevant to the current conversation.

He called the economic-development position "crucial" to addressing the city's declining commercial and industrial tax base, which has resulted in "skyrocketing" taxes on residents, and said it is one of the most important issues the city is facing.

He countered the idea that the council has not given any input, and said he has given a great deal of input on the economic-development position and on past budgets. DiNatale said there were also several public meetings where the council discussed what it wanted in an economic-development manager, meetings Wong attended.

He said he received responses from Wong on questions he asked before the hiring, but that it should not have been the end of the conversation.

DiNatale said it's not fair for Wong to point a finger at the council for asking questions after the appointment, when it had no say in choosing a candidate.

"It defies logic," he said. "It's as if we're not allowed to call into question all the decisions she makes."

While DiNatale did not vote to fund the position, taking issue with how it would be funded, he said councilors may not have voted to fund it had they known they would have no say in who that would be.

He said it has nothing to do with Beck as an individual, just the process -- and that the council may have chosen Beck anyway if given the opportunity. Ward 3 Councilor Joel Kaddy agreed.

Kaddy said Beck is a friend and he has no complaints about him personally, but feels the council was slighted in that it didn't have the opportunity to fully participate in the hiring process.

He said he was under the impression, when he voted to fund the position, that the final candidate would come before the council for appointment. Kaddy thought the process would be much like that of selecting a police chief, in which a selection committee chooses the top three candidates and submits them to the mayor, and her final choice goes before the council for approval.

"The creation of this position was a collaboration between the council and the mayor," said Tran. "This alone was reason enough for the mayor to practice transparency and extend a courtesy to the council to be involved in the hiring process."

Beck did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Beck's resume, before working at the Fitchburg Art Museum, he worked for five years as a volunteer art and science-program director at Beyond Benign, a foundation of the Warner Babcock Institute in Wilmington.

From 1984 to 2009, he served as founder and artistic director of the Revolving Museum, a contemporary art museum in Lowell.

Missing from Beck's resume was his time at Innovation Academy Charter School in Tyngsboro. Beck worked there from January 2009 to late 2010 as a high-school art teacher and "resident innovator," according to Sentinel & Enterprise archives.

Tran said he's lost his confidence in Wong over the process she used in filling a position that needs someone who could "achieve an immediate impact on the city's economy." Kaddy agreed Wong may have trouble garnering council support in the future.

DiNatale also took issue with Wong's previous statements that Beck's position is much like that of the information-technology manager and the housing director in level positions that did not require council approval. He said the difference is that the IT manager reports to the city treasurer and the housing director reports to the Board of Health director, positions which are department heads that report to the mayor and are confirmed by the council. The economic-development director reports directly to the mayor and is listed as a department head on recent city budget reports, DiNatale said, and therefore should be subject to council approval. Tran said the ordinances need to be reviewed.

Hay said he thinks it was appropriate for his fellow councilors to raise questions on the matter, but declined to discuss it until the Council as a Whole Committee meeting, a date for which he said he will set today.

Beck, former director of marketing and community engagement for the Fitchburg Art Museum, was chosen for the position in December out of two applicants vetted by a selection committee consisting of former City Councilors Ellen DiGeronimo and Dolores Thibault-Munoz, former Fitchburg State University Cultural Affairs Director Mary Chapin Durling, Fitchburg Access TV Executive Director David Svens and Enterprise Bank Regional Community Banking Director Ken Ansin.

Svens said Wednesday he did not know how the other members of the committee were selected, but that he had received a phone call from Wong asking if he would be on the committee, and he accepted. He said the committee was given a job description and the resumes of the two candidates, as well as conducted one interview each with both.

"I think we were all surprised that there were just two names," Svens said.

He said members discussed the pros and cons of both candidates and made a unanimous vote for Beck.

While the selection was made at the first meeting, he said the committee met another one or two times and discussed ideas and directions for economic development.

Svens declined to name the other candidate for the position, saying that detail should come from Wong.

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